75% of the Renfe workforce, almost 12,000 employees, participated in some learning action in 2022

MADRID, 5 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Renfe will invest 2.46 million euros in the creation of digital training content for the next three years, which will make it possible to homogenize resources and speed up online training times, as reported by the railway transport company.

Currently, 85% of the training provided by Renfe corresponds to specialized railway subjects for which there is no digital training content on the market. For this reason, the company is going to undertake a first mass production of content - on operations, safety, driving, commercial or maintenance - that will partially cover this need.

The contract for content creation and evolution services for online training in the Renfe Group has been awarded to the company Gestión del Conocimiento SL (Grupo Hedima) for an amount of 2.46 million euros.

The objective is to create a Digital Content Factory that will centralize the development of specific content of railway activity for all the group's companies: Travelers, Freight, Railway Material Rental, Manufacturing and Maintenance, and International.

As the Training Director of the Renfe Group, Lucas Calzado, explained to Europa Press, it is about "uniting the company's expert knowledge in the different sectors with the more general knowledge, in the technological field", to "have these contents that only have interest in the world of railways and, in this case, applied to Renfe".

The group has the Renfe Virtual Campus available to its workers, which covers the management of training activity, an LMS (Learning Management System) learning system and a collaborative learning environment called SocialForm.

Through the LMS tool, a set of updated learning resources adapted to 'online' use is offered for training actions based on 'e-learning' methodologies, also as a complement to face-to-face learning models.

Furthermore, 'gamification' or gamification and the division of content into training pills for rapid consumption through mobile phones contribute to reinforcing learning and consolidating knowledge, also allowing greater flexibility and control of students over their dedication to the training activity. .

Calzado has indicated that, with the development of the Digital Content Factory, the aim is to implement a "more efficient" training model that "reaches all workers more easily", given the difficulties in providing face-to-face courses to those employees who work in workshops, at stations or driving trains.

In his opinion, it is best to combine the two training methodologies - in-person and online - to take advantage of the advantages of each. Regarding face-to-face activity, he believes that "in some areas it is irreplaceable, due to the value it provides" through the relationship with colleagues, the "tutoring of a good teacher" or the possibility of listening to "those who have knowledge specific" on a subject.

In turn, this specific knowledge can be "documented and transferred to digital content to make it available to anyone and at any time," he added, highlighting the "autonomy" and "ease" that this model offers employees to be able to form.

Of the slightly more than 16,000 workers who made up the Renfe workforce in 2022, almost 12,000 participated in some learning action that year, which represents 75% of the workforce. In twelve months, these 12,000 employees - 4.5% more than the previous year - took 9,535 courses and completed more than 1.6 million hours of training.

Calzado has indicated that in the Renfe Group there has been a boost in training since, about six years ago, the public company began to prepare to compete with other companies as a result of the liberalization of the railway transport sector, which put an end to the regime monopoly in Spain.

A strategic plan was drawn up that, among other things, aimed to improve Renfe's position in Spain and its competitiveness and facilitate its access to new markets. To achieve this, one of the key aspects was to reinforce the knowledge and training of workers.

In particular, the capacity to train in areas such as new technological tools was accelerated, and the objective of reaching all the group's professionals in two very specific areas was also set: customer experience and employee experience, because, in the opinion of Footwear, "there is no satisfaction in the service provided to a customer if there is no prior satisfaction in the employee who develops it."

The Training Director pointed out that, to be more competitive and win international markets, "a good policy for implementing the customer experience" was needed, focusing on achieving a commercial activity that favored "high quality in the provision of services." "and achieve" customer satisfaction when interacting with the company.

In parallel to this process, there has been a generational change in the Renfe Group, since for the last four or five years there have been departures of workers who retire and entry of new employees who replace them, about a thousand people each year.

"The workers who leave the company have expert, internal knowledge that is not acquired in any university, such as the world of railways, and we must guarantee its transfer, its continuity, to these new generations that join," he stated. Footwear.

Likewise, new talent must adapt to be able to contribute to the "transformation" of the company in a "competitive, international and more technologically intensive" context, he specified.

Most of the training activity in the Renfe Group is developed on specialized skills in the railway field: 70% on comprehensive safety; about 15%, commercial training; more than 5%, technical maintenance training; and almost 10%, transversal skills.

Some courses, such as those related to regulatory compliance, occupational risk prevention or railway safety, are mandatory, while others are voluntary.

Among the latter, those linked to the specialization of each group stand out - for example, legal or marketing subjects - but also those that teach personal skills or 'soft skills', with a high demand for courses to learn languages.

In 2022, online training hours increased by more than 75% compared to the previous year, reaching more than 92,000 hours. Fundamentally, comprehensive security competencies and transversal skills, such as languages, personal and management skills, self-development, customer experience and basic computing.

Renfe expects that this training activity through the virtual environment in 'e-learning' format, which currently barely represents 6%, will increase to represent more than 20%, complementing face-to-face training, especially in specific railway skills.